Child Psychology
"Life is unfair, kill yourself or get over it."
-Child Psychology, Black box Recorder
When Tom enters the house through the backdoor he finds himself face to face with James, who appears to be doing his nightly pondering.
“Oh, back already then? How was it?”
“It was good. We had fun.”
“That’s good, good.”
Upon the death of Tom’s brother, this is exactly how nearly all of Tom’s conversations with James had panned out.
He imagined it’d be the same with Lily if she ever ventured beyond her bedroom and the washroom.
“And her mother?”
“Not sure. Didn’t see her.”
“Ah.”
Tom is unfamiliar with this James, this sullen man gazing blankly down into the grooves of the worn wooden table as if trying to hold a conversation with it.
He doesn't know when his talent of unconsciously making people uncomfortable in his presence had made everyone supremely less interesting to talk to.
He was done with this conversation already.
“Oh hey, mate, hold on…”
Tom pauses halfway to the stairs trying his best to not make his sigh of contempt outward.
He’s moving toward him now and Tom can see just how awful he truly looks up close like this. Eyes that once twinkled at him with paternal fondness were now sad and dead, his somewhat boyish mess of jet black locks now graying and flaxen down his neck framing his sallow cheeks.
Tom wishes he’d back up.
“Look son Lily…” he trailed off with an embarrassed scoff, “mum she’s, she’s not much up for dinner tonight she’s not feeling very well so I just thought you know we’d just do something together you and me, lord knows I’m a shite cook.” He tries to elicit a laugh from himself but the sound he ended up making just emulated a muffled sob.
Tom has learned enough through his careful studying of people that this is where it’d be polite to throw him a bone.
He smiles.
It’s taken careful practice to master this specific sort of smile. Something, perfectly adolescent in its bashfulness. Something that says, “I see you trying dad.”
“Of course, I’d like that.”
Jame’s smile is reticent if not a bit uneasy.
“Good, great! Just let me er freshen up and we can get going.”
Tom’s smile drops as James disappears down the hallway.
xxx
“....I would like to end with this thought: That when we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.”
“Ok, so how would you summarize that?”
“Long.”
She simply giggles as if she is correcting a child or a half-wit.
“No, er, to summarize is to give an abridged statement simply just addressing the main bits of something.”
“I feel it was very ill-informed.”
Her laugh, this time, was much more patronizing.
“What makes you say that, Tom?”
“Because, this idea, belief that having a fixed idea of someone based on what you see right in front of you is somehow this incredibly immoral thing that we can all put a stop to if we ‘all just try really really hard’ is utopian as hell. I mean where's the line? Where does this lady see past her idealist, ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ mentality and realize that humans have an innate instinct of judgment, it's built into our bones, hardwired into our brains, we are the society we condemn so much, and if you think differently you’ve just gotten good at hiding from yourself.
"So you think people are right to judge you? Based on what's right in front of them?”
She sounded genuinely curious.
The faint sound of a door slamming and the jangling of keys being placed onto a rack echoing down the long hallway from the foyer broke the silence half a second before it could become heavy.
Hermione shifts uncomfortably in her seat and— is that a hint of derision he spots on her face?
“What’s going on in here?”
She doesn’t turn around to face him when she answer, just barely cranes her neck and utters “studying.” Her hand muffles her reply.
He’s behind her now, staring down at her seated form lazily, hands resting in the pockets of his tailored suit. Tom thinks he’s waiting for an introduction.
“Tom, this is Andreas. Andreas, Tom.”
“It’s nice to meet you, sir.” Tom dredges up his award-winning grin, figures a man like this would respect something like that, cool confidence.
His simple reply of “mhm” delivered to Tom through gritted teeth makes him rethink his initial assessment of him a bit.
Dickhead.
And now he’s just standing there, not saying a word, just taking up space. Breaths deliberately long and deep, tight-lipped smile giving him an air of putrid conceit.
Posh dickhead.
“Um, sorry,” she finally turns to face him, if not only to stress the hint that he was not wanted. “Did you need something?”
“I’ll be in my office working till late, I’d appreciate it if you two kept it down.”
“Of course.” her smile is sickeningly sweet.
It fades slowly as he walks away. And by the time she turns around in her chair to face him, it’s gone.
now she’s tucking her hair behind her ear and then pulling it out, and then checking her nails and then tucking again and then — tapping. The tappings back, the steady clicking on the linoleum muted by her choice to wear simple flats today. Tom doesn't even think he made her this irritable.
“So, um, where were we—
“You hate him.”
she laughed as if he were accusing her of a murder and she was guilty.
She's good pretender but a shit liar.
“I do not hate him, Tom, that's a terribly immature thing to say!”
“You can’t fucking stand him, it’s so clear to see.”
“I am trying my best to have a mature and mutually respectful relationship with him by acting within the best interest of my mother and or families.”
‘Families.’
Suddenly, Tom was barraged with a thought.
“Is he why you went away?”
A beat. “How do you know about that?”
“You didn’t answer my question?”
As if spurred by an imaginary bell she begins frantically shoving papers back into folders and GCSE textbooks into a neat stack.
Speaking of bells, they’d been sat here for at least an hour and a half now and — nothing, they’d certainly gone past the time James and Hermione had previously agreed upon. Perhaps she finds Tom’s wit and charm so hypnotizing that she’d forgotten.
“you know what, I think it’s time we pack it in for the day we’ve made a lot of progress—
“Is he? The reason you were sent away? I mean that’s the only reason I could think of why you hate him so much, although he is a dickhead so perhaps you pick up on that too. I think my official consensus is a healthy mix of both otherwise—
“Okay you need to leave,” she nearly yells but as if remembering Andreas’ words from earlier just at the last minute, she takes it down a notch.
“No.”
Tom is aware that he is behaving like a petulant child but he can’t help himself. He wonders how far she’ll let him—
She’s walking away.
Unperturbed, Tom rises from his seat and follows suit.
Feeling him at her back she whips around in a whirl of unruly curls practically crackling with enough electricity to fry the entire foyer.
“You are so! So-, she scream-whispers.
“Tell me how you really feel,” he whispers back, spurring her on.
“You- you-
“Sorry, didn’t quite catch that.”
“I think you’re an incredibly repulsive and off-putting person. Your unabashed probing would almost be admirable if you weren’t so abhorrent, although I can’t help but find your apathy for literally everything oddly fascinating, you’re like a train wreck, or an incel subreddit, the more repulsed I am by you the deeper I want to dig. I want to open up your brain and study it; figure out if you were always like this and I was just too stupid to realize it as a kid, or if I always secretly held a deep contempt for you but kept you around in order to satiate my sick incessant need to figure you out.
The silence that envelopes them post-tangent is occasionally broken up by her sharp pant-like intakes of breath as she eyes him dubiously.
“You think I’m fascinating?”
There goes the ‘Tom’s got a cock on his head’ look again.
“You’re not…mad?”
“It’s the first honest thing you’ve said to me since fourth year.”
And it’s true, although it’s mostly because they haven’t had a full conversation since fourth year.
After a beat of silence, she whispers, “I’m not getting paid anymore.” “I don’t want money.” She adds as an afterthought.
He takes a cursory glance up at the shimmering crystal chandelier overhead bathing them in dim light.
“Don’t exactly need it either.”
She scoffs.
xxx
Later that evening, after Tom has gone she's still thinking of him. Lately He’s started to consume her thoughts, as greedy as someone who actually cares. Now, though, she’s thinking of the time they’d spent together in childhood. The hours they’d spend running through the woods together, or their week-long sleepovers when Tom was between foster families. She can’t even believe there was ever a time that Tom would occupy her reality as frequently as he did her thoughts.
Then she’s thinking about Harry.
They’d only really met a handful of times. He was small but scrappy, he quite reminded her of a scrawny little chihuahua who thought it was bigger than it truly was.
He adored Tom.
That’s something Hermione remembers vividly about the boy. That and he couldn’t take a hint for shit. It didn’t matter to him if he wasn’t wanted somewhere because if his brother was there he was too.
Hermione is suddenly bombarded by the memory of her and Tom challenging Harry to a game of hide n’ seek only to then conveniently forget the ‘seeking’ bit and take off into the woods without him. Now the memory feels more dirty than fond.
She comes up decidedly short when she tries to recall memories of Tom being anything but patient or indulgent with the boy. He really was quite a good brother even if he is a horror to be around.
Then she tries to think of signs.
Obviously, he isn’t all there, and apparently, he’s always been like this but Hermione had never thought him to be mentally ill, not even after the Billy thing. It was an accident, he told her, he cried to her, he begged for help. It all seemed so…real.
But Tom doesn’t feel things like normal people do.
How could he truly have been sorry? How much of Tom that she knows is acting?
“Who was that?”
She starts at the sudden interruption and looks down at her hand tightly gripping the refrigerator handle.
When she realizes who it is she schools her features and replies in a bored, disconnected drawl, “Who was who.”
“I’m not doing this with you,” he responds equally as bored although with considerably less effort.
“Just trying to prolong what little of this riveting insightful conversation we have together Theo.”
“If the amount of conversation we have now could be considered ‘little’ then I'd hate to be the poor sod who talks to you on the regular.”
“People love me, Theo, you’d know that If you’d travel beyond the kitchen and Draco’s pants for a change.”
“News flash, it’s not the 80s, quips made with the punchline 'two straight men are fucking' aren’t offensive anymore. I’d be happy to travel inside Draco’s pants if he’ll have me.”
“I’ll be sure to let him know.”
“Right, and will that before or after you get him to say 3 words to you that aren’t, “fuck, off, and Granger?”
“It’s not my fault your boyfriend has a personal vendetta against me. Maybe it’s because you hate me so much, monkey see…”
“Monkey doesn’t need me to tell him you’re unbearable, you do a bang-up job at that yourself.”
She hates how good he is at this. It’s not even the intellectual property of his comebacks that back her into a corner, it's his speed. Perhaps she should start writing hers down in advance.
“Theo you’re in your twenties and still living with your father, either move out or kill yourself.”
That one didn’t seem to land very well. Perhaps it was her timing.
“Look, if you having rando’s coming and going in the house is going to be a regular thing all I ask for is a little heads up so I know to hide the good china.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll be able to figure it out. You have so much free time now what with no school.”
There.
That’s where it really hurts, she can tell.
But the unflinching look on his face as he stares a bullet between her eyes makes her think this is decidedly less fun now.
She should probably leave.
His eyes stay there, glued to the spot she once occupied. She doesn’t know how long he stayed like that.